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Second reading, by way of my wife's nomination of it for our book group. An inspired, emotional work. I grew to care for these characters. Interwar to postwar period, from Outer Banks of Carolina to the Tennessee River region, ending out West. Sadness and tragedy inform much of the story, but it ends on a more hopeful note. (Earns an extra half star this time.)

Excerpts from my original GR review (Oct 2009):- This is a story of love, dreams, fate, and other unseen wonders- some of them manmade. The writing is spare, at times poetic..- Ray Foster (Fos), fresh from the trenches of the Great War, and on a pilgrimage to the Outer Banks for the Perseid meteors, meets and marries Opal, the fair-headed daughter of a widowed glassblower. He takes her home to Knoxville, where Fos works with his drunken-literate army buddy "Flash" in their photo studio. Fos, an illumination specialist while on the French battlefields, moonlights as a phenomenologist, traveling on weekends with Opal to county fairs with his amazing X-ray box. They fish the Tennessee River with Flash, and make their annual sojourns back to the sea to witness the star showers. - Opal's family roots in eastern Tennessee are revealed in her unexpected inheritance of Clinch River bottom land, next to a tragedy-fated farming cousin and young wife. The rivers and their unmercifully flooding natures become a kind of character in the novel... The haunted, tragic aura of the novel begins to thicken, Flash's black sheep recklessness catches up to him in the form of a prison sentence, and Opal's unspoken dream of raising a family seems lost. - The dawn of the atomic age and the ghostly secrets held at nearby Oak Ridge provide brightened opportunities for Fos and Opal. But Fos's lifelong fascination with mysterious forces sets the stage for the novel's most wrenching disaster. Without giving anything away, I'll say that the final fifty or so pages of the novel are its most powerful, as redemption and hope give things "unseen" a bit more radiance in the end. A very good and very American story. ( )

After I read The Shadow Catcher I knew I had to read another Wiggins book. I am certainly glad I did. Evidence is so well written it sweeps you away. It is about love and physics and discovery and tragedy. I love her writing style, her methods and fully intend to read more of her writings. ( )

I love this book; one of my favorites.I rarely read a book twice but after recently reading ....I was reminded of Wiggins' talent and decided to read Evidence again. Fundamentally, this book is about love and the ultimate importance of relationships. The love between Fos and Opal is told against a mystical like background of the dawn of nuclear physics. Their life progresses through an innocent wonderment with light and radioactivity to death by radiation poisoning; mirroring the tragic progression of nuclear technology in the 20th century. ( )

Somewhere in the heart of North america there is a desert where the heat of several suns has fused the particles of sand into a single sheet of glass so dazzling that it sends a constant signal to the moon.

Wikipedia in English

This poetic novel, by the acclaimed author of John Dollar, describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future.

Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France. Intrigued with electricity, bioluminescence, and especially x-rays, he believes in science and the future of technology. On a trip to the Outer Banks to study the Perseid meteor shower, he falls in love with Opal, whose father is a glassblower who can spin color out of light.

Fos brings his new wife back to Knoxville where he runs a photography studio with his former Army buddy Flash. A witty rogue and a staunch disbeliever in Prohibition, Flash brings tragedy to the couple when his appetite for pleasure runs up against both the law and the Ku Klux Klan. Fos and Opal are forced to move to Opal's mother's farm on the Clinch River, and soon they have a son, Lightfoot. But when the New Deal claims their farm for the TVA, Fos seeks work at the Oak Ridge Laboratory -- Site X in the government's race to build the bomb.

And it is there, when Opal falls ill with radiation poisoning, that Fos's great faith in science deserts him. Their lives have traveled with touching inevitability from their innocence and fascination with "things that glow" to the new world of manmade suns.

Hypnotic and powerful, Evidence of Things Unseen constructs a heartbreaking arc through twentieth-century American life and belief.

"This novel describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future." "Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France. Intrigued with electricity, bioluminescence, and especially x-rays, he believes in science and the future of technology. On a trip to the Outer Banks to study the Perseid meteor shower, he falls in love with Opal, whose father is a glassblower who can spin color out of light.".
"Fos brings his new wife back to Knoxville where he runs a photography studio with his former Army buddy Flash. A witty rogue and a staunch disbeliever in Prohibition, Flash brings tragedy to the couple when his appetite for pleasure runs up against both the law and the Ku Klux Klan. Fos and Opal are forced to move to Opal's mother's farm on the Clinch River, and soon they have a son, Lightfoot. But when the New Deal claims their farm for the TVA, Fos seeks work at the Oak Ridge Laboratory - Site X in the government's race to build the bomb." "And it is there, when Opal falls ill with radiation poisoning, that Fos's great faith in science deserts him. Their lives have traveled with touching inevitability from their innocence and fascination with "things that glow" to the new world of manmade suns."--BOOK JACKET.… (more)